The Illusion of Democratic Credibility

Do democracies make more effective coercive threats? An influential literature in international relations argues that democratic institutions allow leaders to credibly signal their resolve in crises, thereby making their threats more likely to work than threats by nondemocracies. This article revisi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International organization 2012-07, Vol.66 (3), p.457-489
Main Authors: Downes, Alexander B., Sechser, Todd S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Armed forces
Coercive diplomacy
Credibility
Credibility theory
Credible threats
Crises
Datasets
Democracy
Democratic theory
Diplomacy
Effectiveness
Hypotheses
International disputes
International organizations
International political organizations
International Relations
Militarization
Narratives
Political leaders
Political leadership
Polities
Studies
Threat
Threats
World wars
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Do democracies make more effective coercive threats? An influential literature in international relations argues that democratic institutions allow leaders to credibly signal their resolve in crises, thereby making their threats more likely to work than threats by nondemocracies. This article revisits the quantitative evidence for this proposition, which we call the “democratic credibility hypothesis,” and finds that it is surprisingly weak. Close examination of the data sets most commonly used to test this hypothesis reveals that they contain few successful democratic threats, or indeed threats of any kind. Moreover, these data sets' outcome variables do not properly measure the effectiveness of threats, and therefore yield misleading results. The article then reassesses the democratic credibility hypothesis using the Militarized Compellent Threats data set, a new data set designed specifically to test hypotheses about the effectiveness of coercive threats. The analysis indicates that threats from democracies are no more successful than threats from other states.
ISSN:0020-8183
1531-5088
DOI:10.1017/S0020818312000161